AFP Fact Check is an arm of the global news agency AFP, founded in Paris in 1835 as Agence France-Presse. It became one of Facebook’s army of (mostly) liberal fact-checkers in 2017.
The outlet claims its fact-checking efforts are in line with the AFP mission “to provide accurate, balanced and impartial” news coverage. AFP’s charter states that it speaks “with an independent voice free of political, commercial or ideological influence.” But conservatives have reason to disagree with these claims of balance.
Gun Owners of America filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against Facebook and AFP Fact Check in October 2020, after it labeled articles attacking then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ attitudes and record on gun issues “false.” GOA argued the “so-called ‘fact checking’” was a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).
“Examples of erroneous ‘fact checks’ are two articles concerning VP candidate Kamala Harris’ record on the Second Amendment. Both articles – written by Cam Edwards and GOA’s own Rachel Malone – correctly demonstrated Harris’ anti-gun record, but were rated ‘false’ by Facebook, which used the foreign AFP as its source,” GOA wrote.
The press release also said Virginia GOA director John Crump was banned from Facebook for sharing Malone’s article on his Facebook page.
- In October 2020, AFP launched a new fact-checking partnership with communist Chinese-owned TikTok. It will be checking video content in the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand.
- GOA filed an FEC complaint against Facebook and AFP Fact Check over fact-checks of two articles critical of Kamala Harris’ record on Second Amendment issues.
- AFP Fact Check sided with global warming activists when it declared “Climate change is key factor behind California’s wildfires” and promoted the idea that climate change was a bigger factor than forest mismanagement and other factors.
- Like all of the fact-checkers Facebook relies on, AFP Fact Check is an International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) signatory. IFCN is part of Poynter, a liberal journalism non-profit with an advisory board made up of lefties. IFCN also received $1.3 million combined from Pierre Omidyar and George Soros through the liberal billionaires’ foundations in 2017.
- AFP said, “We owe a lot to First Draft, who was behind the CrossCheck online verification project around the 2017 French elections. CrossCheck gave us valuable training and experience of collaborating with many different newsroom partners.” First Draft is another liberal media group. It has a pro-Black Lives Matter statement on its website, and is funded by a host of liberal foundations including Soros’ as well as Facebook and Google.
- AFP Fact Check became a Facebook fact-checking partner in 2017. In 2018, it expanded its work to 13 countries.
Contact AFP Fact Check: Through its website, Twitter or Facebook.